The present invention pertains to a dye-based inkjet ink set and, more particularly, to a dye-based inkjet ink set suitable for printing on polyester and polyester blend fabrics.
Digital printing methods such as inkjet printing are becoming increasingly important for the printing of textiles and offer a number of potential benefits over conventional printing methods such as screen printing. Digital printing eliminates the set up expense associated with screen preparation and can potentially enable cost effective short run production. Inkjet printing furthermore allows visual effects, like infinite pattern repeat sizes, that cannot be practically achieved with a screen printing process.
One area of textile printing ideally suited to digital printing is for printing polyester and polyester blends, where disperse dyes are optimized for effective digital printing. Cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY) disperse dye ink sets for digital printing satisfy most of the needs for textile printing; however, other supplemental colors may be needed to obtain a sufficient color gamut for textile printing.
One particular shortcoming in the gamut of many CMY-based commercial color sets is a difficulty in achieving the bright red colors needed for printed items like the American Flag and the “Ferrari Red” often found in automotive advertising.
It is thus an object of this invention to provide an inkjet ink set having good color gamut, especially in the red region, with the individual inks having good penetration properties that are advantageous for printing on polyester and polyester blend fabrics.